Guide To The Windows Recovery Environment: How To Access And Use It

Learn about the Windows Recovery Environment and how to access and use it to troubleshoot and fix common technical issues with your computer, like when Windows won’t boot.

What is the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE)?

Windows Recovery Environment, or WinRE, is a recovery environment that can repair common startup issues with Windows.  It’s a simplified, much smaller version of Windows with just enough functionality to boot the Windows Preinstallation Environment and load appropriate automated tools to repair boot issues.

What are its benefits?

The Windows Recovery Environment offers several key benefits. I’ll list the most prominent here.

1. Automatic Diagnosis and Repair – WinRE can automatically diagnose and repair common boot problems using a ‘Startup Repair’ tool.
2. Troubleshooting and Recovery – WinRE includes various tools to diagnose and fix problems with booting the Windows operating system. It can also assist with troubleshooting or booting from external USB disks/drives, recovery media, or other external media.
3. Centralized Platform – WinRE provides a central menu interface with advanced recovery tools. Push-button reset, Startup Repair, and System Image Recovery are all included.
4. Update Process – WinRE is also used during the feature update process in Windows 10 and Windows 11. During the ‘offline phase’ of these updates, system files are updated and archived offline after a reboot, without the core underpinnings of Windows running.
5. Preservation of Customizations, Data, and Apps – Using the Push-button reset tool, users can quickly repair the integrity of Windows without losing their apps and data.

What tools are part of WinRE?

Here is a list of the most helpful WinRE tools included in the Windows Recovery Environment.

• Startup Repair– Also known as Automatic Repair, WinRE will automatically start this tool after any of these events occur:
  • Two consecutive failed attempts to start Windows.
  • Two consecutive unexpected shutdowns occur within two minutes of boot completion.
  • Two consecutive system reboots within two minutes of boot completion.
  • A Secure Boot error
  • A BitLocker error on touch-only devices.
  • Tip -> If you want to use this manually, when Windows is initially booting up and you see the splash screen with the Windows flag, the circle animation, and/or your computer manufacturer’s logo, hold the power button down until the computer shuts off. Power it back on, and repeat this one or two more times. Eventually, ‘Automatic Repair’ will start and get you into the WinRE.
• System Restore – This allows you to restore the state of your computer, or Windows, to a prior time, or restore point. Checkpoints can be scheduled and created manually, especially right before you update a device driver or install a new application. In case it goes south, you can boot into WinRE and restore the state of Windows before the failed attempt.
• System Image Recovery – This tool allows you to restore Windows with a previous prior complete system image. I offer more details later on…
• Command Prompt – If you just need to use the command prompt before Windows starts, you can use this interface from the Advanced menu to enter commands or copy/move files from one location to another.
• Startup Settings – This will let you adjust the boot settings of Windows. You can enable booting into Safe Mode, disable driver signature enforcement, and even disable automatic restart on system failure.
• Uninstall Updates – this lets you safely uninstall the latest monthly cumulative update (e.g. ‘2024-07 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 version 24H2 x64’), or the most recent feature update – (e.g. Windows 11 version 23H2 -> Windows 11 version 24H2.)

When my computer won’t boot. Can I use WinRE to fix startup problems?

You can certainly use WinRE to fix startup or boot issues. It’s the tool you should use when your computer won’t boot. ‘Startup Repair’ should automatically start for you if you’ve been unable to boot into Windows successfully. But if for some reason it won’t start, utilize my tip above under the ‘Startup Repair’ heading in the Tools section.

I’ll demonstrate how this functionality works a bit later.

What’s new with WinRE for Windows 11

There have been a few enhancements to the WinRE since Windows 11 was released. Here are some highlights.

• Encrypted Files – When booted into the Windows Recovery Environment, encrypted files won’t be accessible unless the user has the key to decrypt them. This is an obvious security enhancement.
• Ease of Access – Users and IT Pros can now run most of the tools within WinRE without needing an administrator account and entering a password. This makes it easier for general users to access the tools – however, appropriate controls can still be utilized to lock this functionality down if desired.
• Ease of Access Features – When booting into the Advanced Startup portion of WinRE, Ease of Access features will now work in the environment. The narrator feature, which will talk out loud what’s shown on the screen, will function. Specific accessibility settings like keyboard shortcuts are also now enabled.

How to access WinRE

There are several ways to access the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). If you’re in Windows, you can tell Settings to boot directly into WinRE on the next boot.

If you’re using Windows 10:

• Click the Start button and click Settings.
• Click the ‘Update & Security‘ icon and then click ‘Recovery‘ on the left.
• Click the ‘Restart now‘ button under the ‘Advanced startup‘ heading.

If you’re using Windows 11:

• Click the Start button and click Settings.
• Under the System category, scroll down and click on the Recovery option.
• Then, click the ‘Restart now‘ button to the right of the ‘Advanced startup‘ option under the ‘Recovery options‘ category heading.

Windows will restart after asking you to save your work and boot directly into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

• Choose ‘Continue‘ to let Windows boot normally.
• You can select ‘Use a device‘ if you want to boot from a USB drive or boot directly to a Windows Recovery DVD.
• Choose ‘Turn off your PC‘, to…um, shut your computer off.

Anyway, the ‘Troubleshoot‘ section is where all the meat and potatoes are.

Here, we can ‘Reset this PC‘ or open the larger ‘Advanced options‘ menu. Let’s first look at ‘Reset this PC‘.

As is similar when running Windows Setup from within Windows, you can choose to keep your files (Documents, Pictures, Videos, Desktop, etc.) or remove everything. With either option, all of your installed applications and data will be erased – you’ve been warned!

Let me show some more detail on a few of these options here. If you choose ‘Startup Settings‘, you’ll see this screen.

Go back and choose ‘Command Prompt‘ and you’ll see this magic. (How do you like the Windows Vista-like graphics?)

• If you want to boot directly into your computer’s UEFI Firmware Settings (formerly BIOS settings), choose ‘UEFI Firmware Settings‘.
• Also, choose System Restore to utilize the tool I mentioned earlier about reverting Windows to a prior point in time. As you can see here, that feature is not enabled on my Windows 11 Hyper-V virtual machine (VM).

If you click the ‘See more recovery options‘ link at the bottom of the ‘Advanced options‘ main menu, you’ll see the last tool – ‘System Image Recovery‘. This was also mentioned previously in this article.

How to restore Windows with System Restore and System Image Recovery

Before I demonstrate how to recover your Windows 10/11 system with System Restore and System Image Recovery, let me first explain the basics and show you how to make sure they are enabled.

Windows System Restore feature

The System Restore feature creates snapshots of the current working state of your computer. These are known as “restore points.” When configured, specific events will automatically trigger a snapshot being taken (software installs, update installs, Registry changes, etc). You can also manually create a restore point. Note – System Restore is disabled by default.

I remember noting how intrigued and impressed I was with the engineering behind System Restore when it first came out with Windows ME! As an example:

1. Let’s say your computer has Office 2016 installed.
2. You then create a System Restore point.
3. Next, you run the upgrade to Office 2021 (LTSC). Something doesn’t work – maybe Excel won’t start form some reason. Instead of trying to uninstall Office 2021, you revert to that prior restore point and reboot.
4. Like magic, Office 2016 is back as if nothing ever happened. Slick.

How to create a System Restore point

Let’s create a new System Restore point:

• Click the Start button, and type in ‘create a restore point‘ to get to the System Protection tab of the System Properties dialog box.

• Under the Protection heading, you can see it is ‘Off.’ Click the ‘Configure…‘ button to enable the feature.

• Once it’s enabled, click the ‘Create…‘ button to name and create the first restore point. We can then reboot the system into WinRE and show you how to recover the system to this point in time.
• Click the Start button, hold down the Shift key while you right-click the Power button, and choose Restart. This will boot into WinRE.

Once the system has rebooted:

• Choose Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> System Restore

• Click Next and we’ll see our newly created restore point. Select it and click Next.
• We are ready to proceed – click Finish!

After some time, it looks like it worked.

Windows System Image Recovery

The “Hail Mary” feature is called System Image Recovery. This feature creates a complete system image of your Windows 10/11 computer, including all of your Windows system files, personal data, applications, and data… it’s a complete image of your fully functional machine.

There is a key difference between System Image Recovery and ‘Resetting your PC’. When you restore a system image, you are wiping out your existing hard drive, partitions, Windows, applications, etc., and going back to the exact state your computer was in when the image was created. However, when you Reset your PC, you are again wiping your computer, but you are installing a factory-fresh copy of Windows. All of your applications, files, documents, etc. are erased.

I should note – this is a legacy feature from the Windows 7 days and it has not been updated for Windows 10/11. The graphical controls have not been ported to the Settings app. I fully expect this functionality to be removed from a future version of Windows.

Perform a Windows System Image recovery

For completeness’ sake, I’ll explain how this works:

• Click the Start button, type in ‘control‘, and open the Control Panel.
• Under the ‘System and Security‘ heading, click on ‘Backup and Restore (Windows 7)‘.

• On the left, click ‘Create a system image.’
• You then choose where you want the image to be stored. The size of the image will equal all the data consumed by your local computer. If the data on your C: drive consumes 200 GB, you will need a location to store 200 GB. 

• You will need an external drive to be able to choose the ‘On a hard disk‘ option. I happen to have a nice Hyper-V lab with some fileservers, so I chose ‘On a network location‘ and entered an appropriate file share.

After clicking ‘Start Backup‘, it did its thing. This could take a considerable amount of time depending on the target location, potential low-speed wide-area-network (WAN) connections to a network resource, amount of data to back up, speed of the local computer, etc.

• After it finishes, you can close the dialog box.
• You can skip creating the ‘system repair disc‘ for now as we have a functioning WinRE on this system.
• I browsed my fileserver and found the backup files.

• Next, perform the same step to get into WinRE by clicking the Start button, holding down the Shift key while right-clicking the Power button, and clicking Restart.
• On the WinRE main menu, choose Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> See more recovery options (at bottom) -> System Image Recovery.

When booting to WinRE, you only have access to your local computer – the network stack is not loaded. Because of this, I can’t choose the system image saved on a network fileserver I just created. However, if you’ve saved your system image to an external USB drive, you can attach it and use it for the restore. Another special note – everything from the target system will be erased and replaced with this system image!

How to recreate a deleted Windows Recovery Partition

It is rather rare that a Windows Recovery Partition would be deleted or unusable. However, in the event you discover that you can’t boot into WinRE, follow these steps to install a new one. You will need an ISO file of your current Windows version. You can download from Microsoft’s download sites here -> Windows 10  —  Windows 11.

Run Command Prompt as Administrator and run these commands:

DISM /mount-wim /wimfile:X:\Win11\sources\install.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C:\mount (replace 'X:' with the drive letter of your mounted ISO)

COPY C:\mount\Windows\System32\Recovery\winre.wim C:\Recovery\WindowsRE

DISM /unmount-wim /mountdir:C:\mount /commit

reagentc /disable

reagentc /setreimage /path C:\Recovery\WindowsRE

reagentc /enable

reagent /info

How to recover lost files using WinRE

A very common situation is needing to recover files or data from a non-bootable Windows installation. How can you access your important files if you can’t boot Windows?

Simple – use WinRE. You can use the Command Prompt tool. When you access the Command Prompt from the Advanced options menu, you should have access to your C: drive. And if you have an external hard drive or USB stick installed, a D: or E: drive.

Simply copy files using PowerShell in the command prompt from say ‘C:\Documents’ or ‘C:\Temp’ to your USB drive letter. This is a wonderful method to validate you have important data before attempting troubleshooting procedures.

How to uninstall a Windows update using WinRE

One of the options above under the ‘How to access WinRE‘ topic heading is ‘Uninstall Updates‘. If you select this option, you’ll be presented with two sub-options.

• Uninstall latest quality update – this will uninstall the latest MCU, or Monthly Cumulative Update. As an example, I just installed the latest updates on this machine which included the ‘2024-07 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 version 24H2’. If I were to choose this option, it would uninstall it and boot back into Windows as if I had never installed it.
• Uninstall latest feature update – This option is ‘bigger’ and could potentially resolve a larger number of issues. Because I used a Windows 11 installation ISO file to upgrade this specific Windows 11 VM to version 24H2, I could select this to revert to the previous version of Windows – in this case, it would go back to Windows 11 version 23H2. Remember – After you install a Feature Update, you only have 10 days to use this feature until Windows deletes the prior installation of Windows.

Security considerations

There are some important considerations with how users or IT Pros/admins access the WinRE. You can run most tools within the Windows Recovery Environment without selecting an administrator account and entering a password. When booted into the WinRE, encrypted files won’t be accessible however, unless the user has the decryption key for the volume.

By default, networking is disabled in WinRE. You can enable it, but for better security, disable networking when you don’t need the connectivity.

How to customize the Windows Recovery Environment

You can customize the WinRE on a machine or base image by adding packages, languages, custom diagnostics, drivers, or other troubleshooting tools beyond what Microsoft includes by default.

Here are the overall steps to customize and make changes to an existing WinRE (image).

1. Open the Command prompt as an Administrator.
2. Mount the Windows base imagefor editing.
   1. md  C:\\mount\\windowsDism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\\mount\\install.wim /Index:1  /MountDir:C:\\mount\\windows
3. Mount the WinRE image for editing.
   1. md  C:\\mount\\winre  Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:c:\\mount\\windows\\windows\\system32\\recovery\\winre.wim /Index:1  /MountDir:C:\\mount\\winre
4. Add languages – here you add the base language pack and corresponding language packs for each of the Windows PE optional components in the WinRE image.
5. Add driver packages – here is where you add driver packages that are needed for a system to boot.
6. Add OS packages and custom diagnostic tools – this is where you can add additional ‘modules’ that will appear in the ‘Advanced Startup’ menu in WinRE.
7. Unmount the WinRE image
   1. Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\mount\winre /Commit
8. Unmount the Windows image
   1. Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\mount\windows /Commit

You can read this Microsoft documentation for more details.

How to update the local disk Windows Recovery Environment

The on-disk copy of the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) can be serviced as part of rollup updates to the base Windows OS. However, not all rollup updates will service or update the WinRE.

When the WinRE is serviced, incremental or differential updates are not applied – a newer version of the WinRE replaces the existing one. Depending on the partition layout on a computer, and the relative sizes of the main ‘System’ volume (normally the C: drive partition) and the (hidden) ‘Recovery partition (for storing WinRE)’, Windows Update will either shrink the existing Windows partition to expand the size of the WinRE partition or shrink Windows and create a whole new partition for the new WinRE, orphaning the existing WinRE. This can all be analyzed in the Disk Management MMC tool in Windows (right-click on the Start button and choose ‘Disk Management’).

Yes, there is a mind-boggling amount of engineering that goes into Windows and servicing it.

An essential suite of Windows recovery tools

The Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is a very helpful and essential tool that allows IT Pros (and users) to extend the robustness of Windows. By providing a suite of recovery tools, WinRE allows IT Pros to diagnose and repair common issues that might prevent Windows from starting correctly.

It includes functionalities like Startup Repair, System Restore, Reset your PC, and others. The user-friendly interface and robust capabilities of WinRE make it an indispensable resource for IT professionals ensuring their users get back to work quickly after an unexpected issue with booting Windows.

Please leave a comment or question below – thanks for reading.